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Thursday, 25 May 2017

The Americans are humiliating us but Rudderless and Mayhem do nothing

The United States repeatedly leaking the intelligence that the British shared with them is yet another example of America spitting in Britain's face, and the Tory government doing nothing but impotently stamp their little feet in response.The theory is that the UK has an intelligence sharing agreement with the United States so that the two nations can cooperate against terrorist threats and the like. In reality it seems that the agreement exists so that US spooks can leak classified British intelligence details to their chums in the United States press.

After the name of the Manchester bomber was leaked by the Americans, the Home Secretary Amber Rudd called the leak "irritating" and said that it "should not happen again".

Within hours of her saying it shouldn't happen again, US spooks leaked a load of pictures of the blast scene to the New York Times.

There's no other way of seeing this than as a huge humiliation for Amber Rudd. The Americans spat in her face by leaking the name of the killer, she stamped her little foot and said it should not happen again, then they launched an even bigger gob at her by leaking actual pictures from the blast site, laughing at her impotence as they did it.

Just imagine if the boot was on the other foot and it was British spooks repeatedly leaking highly sensitive evidence from an ongoing US investigation into a terrorist atrocity.

Do you think Trump would put on a petulant little display of foot stamping (like Rudderless and Mayhem) or do you think he'd be furiously lambasting the UK to his Twitter followers, demanding that the source(s) of the leak be identified and punished, and plotting retribution against the UK?

Of course he would.

These intelligence leaks are far from the first time the Americans have humiliated the UK.

Trump may be a bigoted, narcissistic and profoundly-ignorant bully, but he's certainly has the cunning to spot weakness and take advantage of it, and Theresa May headlong rush over to America to beg him for a trade deal was about as pathetic a display of weakness and subservience as it's possible to imagine.

Having put ourselves in such a desperately weak diplomatic position by voting to tear up relations with our neighbours, the UK was never going to be getting an easy ride from the Trump administration, but Theresa May's craven subservience has clearly exacerbated the situation.

You can either be in a weak position and stand defiant, or you can be in a weak position and go around licking boots and begging for favours.

The outcome from putting ourselves in such a weak diplomatic position is almost certainly going to be extreme economic chaos and the national humiliation of having actually inflicted this mess upon ourselves, but at least we could have gone down with a bit of self-respect with a stronger and less craven leader.

Theresa May's weakness and subservience has led to the additional humiliation of our so called special friend laughing at us and repeatedly spitting on us on our way down.

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